Where's My Job?
Sneak Peeks at Tomorrow's Office
Although new communications tools and mobile devices have dramatically improved office productivity so much that many companies do not expect drastic new innovations, but new office technology is already working in laboratories and technological advances will make them affordable in the ...
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Machine Rage Is Dead...Long Live Emotional Computing
Emotionless decision-making is not really so effective, according to British researchers who are building computers sensitive to human feelings. "The cold, unemotional Mr. Spock on Star Trek simply could not have evolved," explains Salford University artificial intelligence expert Ruth ...
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Australian Societies Adopt ACM/IEEE-CS Code of Ethics
Two leading software engineering groups in Australia have adopted the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, an internationally recognized code of ethics developed by the ACM and IEEE-CS. By embracing the code, the Australian Computer ...
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Concern Grows Over Browser Security
The Computing Technology Industry Association's second annual report on IT security and the work force indicates 36.8 percent of respondents experienced one or more browser-based attacks during the last six months, up from 25 percent the year before. Browser-based attacks occur when users ...
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Gopher: Underground Technology
Before the Web came along and stole its thunder, the "gopher" protocol from the University of Minnesota allowed nontechnical users to view Internet data in a standard format and through a simple visual interface. Named after the university's mascot and created in 1992, gopher has a committed ...
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Radio Tags May Give Consumers More Power
Along with the privacy concerns and benefits to corporate business, radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology also promises greater amounts of useful information to consumers when and where they need it. In the future, people will be able to use handheld devices to scan product ...
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A 'Free' Boost for Multimedia
A free software project for multimedia production, backed by the European Commission, is gaining momentum and rivals the quality of proprietary offerings, according to proponents. AGNULA is basically GNU/Linux-based audio software for home musicians and audio enthusiasts. The AGNULA ...
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Turning Robots Into a Well-Oiled Machine
Researchers from three U.S. universities are working to create autonomous teams of robots that can assist at disaster sites. Emergency response personnel say controlling robots is a time-consuming task given the amount of data human operators have to deal with. If teams of robots could be ...
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Robot Guided By Its Voice
The University of Toronto, which uses a robot to guide visitors through its Artificial Perception Lab, recently enhanced the machine with sound source localization. As the robot makes its prerecorded remarks about different parts of the facility, microphone arrays embedded in the walls determine ...
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Blind People to 'See' Color By Touch
Artur Rataj, from the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Computer Science at the Polish Academy of Sciences, has created computer software for translating color images into tactile form, allowing blind people to discern color information in images. Several techniques are used to ...
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The Porous Internet and How to Defend It
Network researchers say the open TCP/IP Internet protocols mean criminals have easy access to their targets, and that there is no simple way to change Internet design. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was developed to be as open and transparent as possible. Internet ...
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Computers Learn to Understand Sefrican
Researchers in South Africa are testing a voice-recognition system that is designed to understand the various languages and accents spoken by South Africans. Professor Justus Roux, director of the Research Unit for Experimental Phonology at the University of Stellenbosch, says the ...
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Spaced Out on the Interplanetary Internet
NASA is working on space networking technologies that could produce significant benefits for Earth applications. The Interplanetary Internet was launched in 1998 with funding from the Defense Department, and signed on Internet pioneer Vincent Cerf as its research head. Cerf describes the ...
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Drive-By-Wire Closer Than You Think
European researchers are developing drive-by-wire capabilities that should reduce traffic accidents on the Continent by half. Researchers working on the PEIT project, scheduled for completion this summer, have created an electronic control unit (ECU) that is capable of taking over driving ...
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Internet Congress Convenes
The first Internet Commons Congress (ICC) was held recently in Rockville, Md., drawing some 150 participants, including privacy advocates, free-speech activists, and members of the free-software community. The aim of the event was to foster greater communication and solidarity among the ...
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Quantum Computing: Bit by Bit
In the quest to create usable quantum computers, scientists are tackling basic questions about how to define the boundary between the quantum and macroscopic worlds. In the mid-1990s, Researchers at AT&T Bell Laboratories brought quantum computing from hypothesis into established ...
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Defender of U.S. Cyberspace
InfraGard started as an FBI pilot project, but is now a national entity that sharing information between the federal government and private industry, and has some 10,700 volunteer members and 79 chapters. National chair Phyllis Schneck says that InfraGard receives analysis information ...
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Where's My Job?
Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, says companies in the United States are not losing their dominance in IT because they are moving jobs overseas. Wince-Smith says high-tech companies such as IBM are often outsourcing their back-office operations, such as customer ...
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